This is a book about stuff (which can be material or immaterial), desire (resulting from need or greed), and collapse. Desire chases stuff up an imaginary curve (called an asymptote) that  never gets quite vertical. A collapse happens when the curve gets too steep. The activity  - consuming stuff, devising complex systems to manage diminishing stuff, being happy - whatever - cannot be sustained. The curve wobbles, falls. The infinitely infinitesimal gap between rising and falling is crossed.

According to Dylan Thomas...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

 

Crossing Infinity is a book of distillations. The six books distilled here - never brought together before -  relate in one way or another to collapse...

 

The Great Disruption - Paul Gilding

The Upside of Down - Thomas Homer-Dixon

Coming Apart - Charles Murray

Collapse - Jared Diamond

Black Swan - Nassim Taleb

The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman

 According to Paul Gilding and Thomas Homer-Dixon our stuff addicted society is headed for a collapse of consumption and energy. According to Jared Diamond such collapses have already happened on regional levels.  According to Charles Murray we are headed for a social collapse. According to me such collapses can be: (1) pictured on asymptotic curves, (2) triggered by black swans, (3) spread over a flat earth.